


Oversecting

by Coffin Liqueur (HP_Lovecats)



Category: Monster Prom (Visual Novel)
Genre: Ambivalence, Character Study, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Lore Coupon Route Spoilers, Mild Angst, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:01:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23617183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HP_Lovecats/pseuds/Coffin%20Liqueur
Summary: Liam has an apology for Hope.AHope, at least.
Kudos: 12





	Oversecting

"I'd like permission to ask you... a potentially very difficult and invasive question... which, I assure you, I understand entirely if you would rather not dwell on."

When Hope shutting her locker had brought her face to face with _a Liam_ , she'd been ready to tell him that if he'd been looking for Joy, he'd do best to find her in the library; tutoring Manuel Strobelight the Werefish (not to be confused with _Merman_ ) in Forgotten Runes - a muchly vexatious class, indeed, 'cause you've got to love a class that tests you on a subject that, to preserve logical consistency, inherently comes with wiping your mind of the material you've learned once you've learned it.

Her mind stuck on that for about three beats, as she sized Liam up - eyes shifted aside, shoulders hiked up and arms stiffly-crossed behind his back.

She wasn't entirely sure how to look at him now. Joy's hipster-nerd ex. Her mental image rippled. Joy's boyfriend, and _her_ very own _pal_ , all gothed up and looking better with that hair. It rippled again. Liam having just revealed his real name, dressed in black and looking smaller tha -- it rippled again. Angelus, the Coven's greatest foe, in a decked-out-ass sweeping cloak.

To think she had so many memories of all these other Liams _smiling_.

The Second Hope's vision, she then noticed, wasn't fading entirely - superimposed on right now in her mind's eye. She suddenly knew exactly what he was going to ask her, and a soreness stiffened in behind her sternum.

"Lemme guess," she says, without nearly as much of the swoop of a blase brand of unenthused carrying out the graveness of it as she'd attempted to push it out on, "it's about -- the other mes, isn't it."

"As I said, Hope..." Slit pupils flicking onto her face. "...I respect your right to decline when it comes to talking about the subject, especially with me."

Confirmation, then.

Her eyes fell.

Her head began to weave, almost of its own accord, into a small, small series of shakes. "Nah," she said. "I'm not gonna bother. Fire away."

Realizing she did, in some _I wonder if I should be doing this_ sense, want to be asked, so she could rack her mind for the answers.

"In that case..." Liam straightened his glasses by the side of the frame; a quick fidget of his weight side-to-side before standing up taller. The tip of a fang bit harder, if faintly, into his lower lip.

Her eyes had switched back up to him, half-lidded.

"...You _do_ have the other Hopes' memories, correct?" A pause in which that fang hooked harder for a split second. "Not just of their deaths?"

She heard herself scream three times, overlaid and overlapping and blurred, the after-feel of three wounds screaming likewise under her skin, no-temperature, all-light.

She appreciated, at least, that it wasn't nearly as bad as it was before, now that she knew what her mind was doing.

Recalling memories.

And yet.

"I mean..." She lifted her hand, to the height of her own elbow, fingers lifting and pausing, as if beginning a hypnotism but then thinking better of it. "I don't really have control over... what I remember, or when, or anything..." Her eyes rolled up into a corner, gradually - brow knitting with frustration as she considered that fact, as if it would help something if she could. "...but I mean, yeah? Can confirm, seems to me like it really is all in there..."

She heard Liam breathe and looked back down to him in the pulse of a blink, thinking of the name _Angelus_ first, and wondering if she had tricked herself into doing that.

"In that case," he said, "don't worry. I've already done this with Faith; trust me. But... particularly, now that you remember being the Second Hope..."

Just one of those screams.

"...I _would_ truly like to apologize. And, much like my questioning, you don't have to accept it."

She blinked.

Leaned back, a bit, on one foot, for more room to assess him as a proxy for something else.

She felt nothing, immediately. In her thoughts, she forgave him, not understanding him as having done anything - besides mutually break Joy's heart, yes, that she knew, but she also knew that _Joy_ had long since forgiven him. What business did he even have in asking forgiveness for anything from _her?_ When she had a feeling, it was mildly-peeved bafflement.

Ripple.

Her heart warmed and warmed in a neon-red superheating and she wanted to laugh and cry and hug him tight, because he was a good friend and he had done so well to change and of course she forgave him, and she was proud of him, and it didn't have any time to take over the look on her face before the emotions rippled again.

Bitter, sheer icicle-stabbing confusion and wailing internal panic. He should have been asking _all_ of them. She didn't even know what to say.

Rippled again.

That indifference again, but tenser. Colder, like an open barren nighttime plain; she had begun to stare at him, processing. Noticing in the back as his features turned, sadly.

 _Angelus did something he's gonna have to ask forgiveness for_ , she heard a voice that sounded like hers saying. _What a shocker._

"...Don't worry about it," she said, stiff and dry and mechanical, before she turned and walked away, inside her thoughts, sorting pieces, trying to remember what happened to who and who felt what, creating Happy Hopes and Scared Hopes and Witch Hopes and Deliverygirl Hopes, still trying to make sense of the nature of the edges in how to put the pieces together into one picture.

**Author's Note:**

> This dang site needs more Coven fic.
> 
> Written for the r/FanFiction April Daily Prompt challenge. April 11th: "Someone Has A Long-Overdue Apology To Make. It's Up To The Other Person Whether They'll Accept It Or Not".


End file.
